There is a need for a radical step-up in the attention we pay to current and future climate impacts and associated efforts. Despite inspiring examples of adaptation solutions, stand-alone risk reduction projects that tackle issues through direct or existing policy levers are common practice. Adopting a systemic, transformative approach is advocated by the Mission Adaptation and European Green Deal. P2R takes an innovative systemic approach to regional climate resilience; one indivisible from Europe’s future economic and social development, intersecting with net zero commitments, and demanding a markedly different approach from the one adopted so far. P2R will empower at least 100 regions and communities to co-design visions of a climate resilient future and corresponding transformative, locally led pathways and innovation agendas that ensure long-term impact through political commitment. We do this by: (a) mobilising regional interest and progressively elevating the ambition and capability of regions; (b) developing a Regional Resilience Journey framework (and supporting services) to equip regions and communities in developing climate resilience pathways and connected innovation agendas; (c) allocating €21M across 100 regions and communities via two open call cycles to support their Journeys (d) triggering a wide engagement of citizens and diverse stakeholders in the co-creation of the pathways; (e) increasing knowledge on adaptation innovations across Key Community Systems (KCS) and enabling conditions; (f) boosting literacy and access to (innovative) adaptation finance; and (g) developing a Resilience Maturity Curve to baseline and monitor regional resilience capacities. Led by Climate KIC, the P2R consortium brings the combined strength of: regional network organisations, technical designers and innovators of transformative adaptation, adaptation finance experts, learning and capability building specialists, and monitoring and innovation impact partner.

This project will develop a decision-support system (DSS) for disaster risk management by considering multiple interacting natural hazards and cascading impacts using a novel resilient-informed and service-oriented approach that accounts for forecasted modifications in the hazard (e.g., climate change), vulnerability/resilience (e.g., aging structures and populations) and exposure (e.g., population decrease/increase). The primary deliverable from MEDiate will be a decision support framework in the form of service-orientated web tool and accompanying disaster risk management framework providing end users (local authorities, businesses etc) with the ability to build accurate scenarios to model the potential impact of their mitigation and adaptation risk management actions. The scenarios, which can be customised to reflect local conditions and needs (e.g., demographics, deprivation, natural resources etc), will be based on a combination of the historical record and future climate change projections to forecast the location and intensity of climate related disaster events and to predict their impacts, including cascading impacts, on the vulnerability of the local physical, economic and social systems. The scenarios will allow end users to evaluate the potential impact of different risk management strategies to reduce vulnerability and enhance community resilience. The project will consist of analysis of relevant data and co-development with testbed decision-makers of a DSS to enable more reliable resilience assessments, accounting for risk mitigation and adaptive capabilities, to be made, therefore reducing losses (human, financial, environmental etc) from future climate-related and geophysical disasters. The project will involve a multi-disciplinary team of geophysical and meteorological scientists, risk engineers, social scientists, information technologists and end-users, working together to ensure that the system is user-led and supported by appropriate technology.

Supercomputers have been extensively used to solve complex scientific and engineering problems, boosting the capability to design more efficient systems. The pace at which data are generated by scientific experiments and large simulations (e.g., multiphysics, climate, weather forecast, etc.) poses new challenges in terms of capability of efficiently and effectively analysing massive data sets. Artificial Intelligence, and more specifically Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) recently gained momentum for boosting simulations’ speed. ML/DL techniques are part of simulation processes, used to early detect patterns of interests from less accurate simulation results. To address these challenges, the ACROSS project will co-design and develop an HPC, BD, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) convergent platform, supporting applications in the Aeronautics, Climate and Weather, and Energy domains. To this end, ACROSS will leverage on next generation of pre-exascale infrastructures, still being ready for exascale systems, and on effective mechanisms to easily describe and manage complex workflows in these three domains. Energy efficiency will be achieved by massive use of specialized hardware accelerators, monitoring running systems and applying smart mechanisms of scheduling jobs. ACROSS will combine traditional HPC techniques with AI (specifically ML/DL) and BD analytic techniques to enhance the application test case outcomes (e.g., improve the existing operational system for global numerical weather prediction, climate simulations, develop an environment for user-defined in-situ data processing, improve and innovate the existing turbine aero design system, speed up the design process, etc.). The performance of ML/DL will be accelerated by using dedicated hardware devices. ACROSS will promote cooperation with other EU initiatives (e.g., BDVA, EPI) and future EuroHPC projects to foster the adoption of exascale-level computing among test case domain stakeholders.

The Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe” aims to pioneer, showcase, and accelerate the transition to healthy soils by 2030, supporting the long-term commitments at European and global level within the Green Deal and Sustainable Development Goals. Ultimately, the creation of 100 Living Labs (LLs) and Lighthouses (LHs) will accelerate the creation and uptake of solutions by land managers, showcase measurable increase in soil health, improved social capital and citizen awareness. SOILL – lead by ENoLL, the international association of certified LLs – aims to set up and run an effective, agile, transdisciplinary, capillary, open and fair one-stop-shop structure. This will coordinate, support, enlarge, and promote the network of 100 Soil Mission LLs and LLs, and ensure their co-created, user-centred, harmonized, reliable, impactful, replicable, and sustainable lead of the transition towards healthy soils across different settings, geographical and socio-economic contexts. To facilitate this, the SOILL action plan has been designed to be agile and ready to adapt to the specific needs and requirements of LLs and LHs (applicant and established) as well of the different actors relevant in the different ecosystems and value chains. SOILL will support the production, exchange, and integration of knowledge to be transformed into specific and specialised skills for expanding practice, social capital, and policies. SOILL will help established LLs and LHs - as well as regional and national stakeholders seen as potential applicants - in building peer-to-peer relationships to ensure that best practices, guidance, knowledge, and lessons learnt are meaningfully shared and that they can learn from each other and scale up implementation of innovative approaches. Alongside, SOILL will start, facilitate, and coordinate the interaction of the network in the wider framework of the soil-related ecosystems, engaging all relevant stakeholders at national, European, and international level.